DARA TORRES-OLYMPIC SWIMMER

She is the oldest to ever be on the Olympic swim team. China will be her her fifth Olympics. She has great financial resources according to the article but she also has a tremendous talent and DRIVE. SHe is 41 years old and the world will be watching her very soon. I recently had a conversation and your 'physical peak' is at age 25 for the general population. As we get older we need to train smarter, not harder or more frequently. She is a great example of this.
I am on the road tomorrow. Enjoy the beat downs you give each other. See you all in August.

Friday is the last day of official training. Over the next couple weeks some of the classmates will train. Find out who they are on Friday and make the effort. August 6th may be the first available day I have after my vacation. Watch for emails and watch this blog for training times. Friday will be a review of windmills and the Turkish Get-Up. These two movements are part of the RKC minimums. I am really looking forward to our August training. Hopefully the weather will co-operate and we can hit it...hard-style. See you Friday!!
~Michael

IT WAS SUPPOSE TO BE A 'REST' DAY

This is the problem with kettlebells. They ache to be played with. So, instead of resting I make a date with the Beast. It was a beautiful day but just a little windy. Either way, this is all I was going to do....then I decided to bang out the windmills with the 32kg and the 40 kg. Life is good...

TODAYS TRAINING

Today was a day off for me. That is , until I read the Dragon Door forum. Jason Brown (one of the most outspoken RKC Team Leaders) posted what he felt was a disappointing effort. The ladder is to 10. Alternating with swings and burpees. 1 swing/1 burpee, 2 swings/2burpees...and so on. Get it done in 5 minutes. He did it in 5 min 41 sec. using a 24kg for the swings. We do this type of drill all the time in class. We will crush his score on Friday for the final, hopefully. If not, we are still in great company. By the way, I used the 28 kg and finished in 4 min 5 sec. Why the 28 kg? Because I thought I had grabbed the 24kg. OOPS.

JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN...

Doesn't mean you should. This is a great lesson and statement on human nature and training. Trainers are creating 'extreme' everything as a marketing tool. It is not very productive. Just do the work. Stay true to form and the form with be true to you. The hype is mucking up the joint. We have three meetings remaining in this session. I will bang out the basics for everyone to digest before the break. Just a nice review. We will do press and press variations on Friday. At the end of the training we will unwind the shoulders. See you Friday!!
~Michael

10 MINUTE PLANK? WHY?

What's the point? What have you accomplished? Well, I could go into my ramblings about the differences between inner and outer strength. Dealing with body management under harsh conditions. Getting outside your element and comfort zone. I could go into all the things that happen and how the body benefits from the static load. But here's what didn't happen. Nobody died. Nobody lost skin from the movement. The sore palms went away before the end of the training. You took yourself to a certain level of discomfort and tested your metal. Some put their knees down earlier than they needed because they were told this would take ten minutes. Others tried to do a personal best and just hang in there as long as possible. One classmate wanted some relief from her hands so rather than drop her knees down she went into a one handed plank, alternating hands. How cool is that? A ten minute plank is not outside our abilities. Really, we needed to manage about 5 minutes of discomfort. I don't know why people run, but think of the marathon. 2-5 hrs of pain management. The whole time their electrolytes are being depleted and they are running zombies by the end of the race. We went for 10 minutes and nobody lost a toe nail.
At the end of the day...it's just a thing. Just a thing we did this day. We won't do it again for a while. We will do some "thing" else. We don't train with kettlebells because it's easy. We train because we know first hand how effective and efficient it is. One day soon (August) I would like to have the class do the Secret Service Snatch Test. It is 10 minutes of straight work. You can put the bell down as many times as you want but when the final 15 seconds is counting down that bell better be in motion. Meaning, everyone stays for the duration. It is a ten minute test. Why 10 minutes? Because 5 min is to easy. Not a challenge. Seven minutes a door of discomfort opens. From eight to ten minutes you want to reach for the puke bucket. Men use the 24 kg. Women use the 16 kg as the standard. For our purposes, dropping down one size will be allowed. Additionally, gloves and tape will be allowed. You can switch hands as many times as you want. Just something to chew on as we go into the August month.
Training resumes on Tuesday at 6:15 pm. Have a great weekend. We all wish Leisha a safe bike ride home after the party!

THURSDAY (JULY 3rd) EXTRA TRAINING

Why were the shoulders so sore after Tuesdays training? The swings intensity is focused on the bottom portion of the movement. The drive. The bell coasts at the apex or anything above the chest or nipple line. In order to launch the bell we need to 'drive' the full range and build speed through the apex of the movement. It is still just a swing. The footing should have stayed the same. There should not have been a balance problem. No extra steps after the launch. Nothing extra but drive. The lower back is exposed on the extension. The hips snapping forward will support the lower back only if the glutes are tight. If you stayed true to the movement the discomfort would be minimal the following day. If your focus was to "launch at all costs" for distance...then I can see where your body decided to bark at you. Over all a very solid drill and very well done. Today we will meet at 6-6:15pm along side the community center. It will be cooler today with cloud coverage. See you then!!

TUESDAYS TRAINING (JULY 1st)

Monday was just a little warm. Tuesday is suppose to be in the 90's. Bring your water and lotion with SPF 100. We will train in the hockey rink behind the Fire Station at Central Park (next to the community center. We trained there last summer and it worked well for some things.This will be one of those days. Paul was feeling a little nostalgic so...off we go. Mondays training went well. I am always impressed with how well everyone hangs in there and does the real work. Doesn't it seem odd that at the end of the hour, before we can catch our breath, while the sweat is pouring off our bodies a classmate asks the all important question, " Are we training tomorrow ?" THAT rocks.